As a short story author, Samuel George conjures surreal plots and characters, but when hurricane Isaac crashed through his home, trapping him inside amid rising flood waters, nothing prepared him for the drama to follow.

It was 5am on Wednesday when the 53-year-old writer awoke to the sound of howling wind and water rushing through his home, an elevated trailer by the Mississippi river just outside New Orleans.

George, like thousands of others in the low-lying parish of Plaquemines, had ignored an evacuation order despite hammering rain and the fateful anniversary of hurricane Katrina. "I suppose it was foolish to stay, but I had no money, so I stayed," he said.

In 2010 he published an ebook of short stories, Journey to Absentia, a blend of science fiction and western genres, but it made no money, so home was a trailer – and, it turned out, salvation.

He tumbled out of bed into cold water rapidly rising up his legs. Disorientated amid the storm's roar he tried to open the front door but the surge jammed a set of steps and porch against it, wedging it shut.

"I tried to get out the window but there was a smell of gas coming from the utility room so I went back to the door. Everything was pitch black, frightening. I was alone. I had a moment of panic."

The bespectacled writer, a slight, balding figure with long hair and a goatee, managed to force the door open only to be confronted by a terrifying torrent. He looked up and saw a glow: his neighbour, Mike, on the roof with a flashlight. The writer scrambled up with the aid of Mike and an adjacent oak tree – "You could say Mike saved my life." But they were marooned and the water continued rising.

Simultaneously thousands of others were locked in their own battles for survival as Isaac bore through the mouth of the Mississippi and up across Louisiana, reviving memories of Katrina's lethal carnage on the same day in 2005. Rain emptied 5.6in of water on Louis Armstrong airport, a record, and four times that elsewhere. Much of the town of Braithwaite drowned. Television pictures showed eerie images of floating caskets apparently from a cemetery.

Yet catastrophe was averted. New Orleans' fortified flood controls withstood Isaac. By Wednesday night the only reported fatality was a man who fell from a tree in the city.

The true extent of damage in and around New Orleans will emerge piece-meal in following days. The city declared a dawn-to-dusk curfew to avert looting and accidents. "There is no such thing as 'just' a tropical storm," said Craig Fugate, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "You have significant weather impacts still to occur."

Even so there was a sense – as rains and wind abated somewhat – that the worst had passed and that the post-Katrina $14.5bn flood controls had saved New Orleans.

The mayor, Mitchell Landrieu, told local radio the system of walls, floodgates, levees and pumps had prevailed. "It is holding exactly as we expected it to and is performing exactly as it should."

'All I know is we were very glad to see them'

In Plaquemines, a rural outpost where surges swamped a levee, there was destruction but no reported deaths. Bodies may be discovered when waters recede but it seemed neighbours' acts of valour and a speedy official response saved most if not all lives.

George and Mike's survival typified this success – and ran counter to his fiction which abounds, according to Amazon's book description, with "hopeless calamities in which the outcome is not always favorable".

'I suppose it was foolish to stay, but I had no money, so I stayed,' Samuel George said. Photograph: Rory Carroll

Cold and thirsty, as hours passed they improvised ponchos from bin liners and collected rainwater from the oak tree's leaves. As the flood water reached the roof and pooled around their ankles they kept their spirits up with stories. Then they scooped a doe from the torrent. An armadillo also clambered aboard the refuge.

By around 2pm on Wednesday they spied a boat. "There was so much foliage and rain we yelled and shined a light to get attention."

George was so exhausted he did not even register whether the rescuers were police, national guard or the "Cajun navy" – private citizens with their own boats. "All I know is we were very glad to see them."

The men brought the young deer aboard and to safety – a scene to rival Life of Pi had they not left the armadillo behind because of its claws.

By Wednesday night George, barefoot but dry, was at a YMCA centre in Belle Chase hosting 120 other people, one of numerous improvised shelters.Officials warned that Isaac, though downgraded to a tropical storm, would continue to wreak havoc as it ploughed northwest toward Baton Rouge, possibly adding to the 600,000 people left without power.

Here in Plaquemines Parish, which includes Braithwaite, some complained that their defence system, separate from New Orleans, had been neglected. But even the desolation of those who lost homes was tinged with relief that they and their loved ones survived.

Mike Easley, a shipyard foreman, stood outside the YMCA entrance, brim of his baseball cap bowed against the wind and rain, wrapped in a blanket big enough for three. In his arms he cradled Candy and Little Bit as tenderly as if they were new-born babies. One a Pomeranian, the other a rat terrier, the pets were not permitted inside the building, so Easley braved the elements while waiting for friends to collect them.

He and his wife had spent 11 hours cowering in an attic in Braithwaite with a friend, Jimmie Hutchinson, and his wife. "Where I was it floods all the time so we went to his house, which never floods," Easley said. "Except for this time."

Hutchinson said they had never previously been flooded. "In Katrina I never had no water – never got none in the house. This time, here … it was outrageous. All that was left sticking up was the roof."

But there was a moment of black humour under the gray sky as the couples joked about the first name of Easley's wife: Jinx. She gestured at a blue suitcase, little enough to take on an airplane as cabin baggage, with the zipper open to create a small gap at the top.

Inside was a kitten she had saved. "She pops her paw out now and then," Jinx said.